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Saturday, April 21, 2012

A Look at Movie Marketing and JOHN CARTER

This originally began as
a review for the semi-recent mega-blockbusting flop John Carter. However, it
quickly derailed into an essay on effective marketing. Therefore, I’ve decided to split my
posts. I’ll write this as an essay on
the marketing of John Carter and why
I think it failed, and then I’ll write up a review at another time and post it.

Enjoy.

Movie marketing is a
tricky and incredibly difficult business.
Whenever you market a movie, you’re making a promise to the audience
that the movie will be a certain way.
People like to see the same thing in a new way—we’re weird like that. We like to be told what we’re getting
into. The less sure people are of what
to expect, the less they’re willing to take a chance and drop $20 - $50 at the
movies. If you advertise a movie one way
and it’s actually a completely different type of movie, you may have a large
opening weekend, but your movie will quickly tank as word of mouth spreads that
your movie is a stinker.

Many movies have
suffered the wrath of flawed marketing.
One of the most notable comes from the horror genre. The “slasher” film April Fool’s Day. In April Fool’s Day, a group of teenagers
go stay on an island with one of their friends.
The advertisements for this movie were a bunch of teens dying
gruesomely, which was just what the horror-going audience at the time
wanted—this was at the height of the slasher movie craze of the 80’s. What happened? Well, at the end, we learn that nobody died
and that it was all just a series of pranks played on their friend. And at the very end, they throw in one last kill…that also turns out to be a
prank as well. As you can imagine,
people were pissed.

April
Fool’s Day represents
exactly what movie advertisements do wrong.
By misrepresenting your movie and showing things out of context, you can
potentially alienate your target audience and create a strong sense of lack of
confidence for the movie, as if it can’t stand on its own and needs to resort
to cheap tricks to succeed.

The rationale behind
movie advertisements is to stick the best moments of the movie (or at least,
some of the best) into the trailer to get us to want to see it. However, if, like in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Paranormal Activity 3, you put some
scenes into the trailer that aren’t actually
in the freakin’ movie, then we’re likely to get really angry over being
lied to. It violates the trust that the
product you’re marketing to us is actually something we want.

[Imagine,
corporate America selling us things we don’t need or want.]

Other products have
standards they have to meet when they market them. You can’t market a deodorant as “cancer
fighting” unless it actually fights cancer.
Back in the 50’s, while filming commercials for soup, they’d put marbles in the bottoms of the bowls of soup to
make the soup look like it had more noodles, but
nowadays? You’ve got to be at least
partially truthful. That’s why, even
though in commercials we have guys sliding down snowy mountainsides in their
trucks, we also have a disclaimer saying that it’s not actually capable of
that. Stupid? Yes.
But at least they’re being truthful.

All of this discussion
of movie marketing leads me to the actual point for this article, which is to
discuss the movie John Carter, an
action-adventure sci-fi, space opera movie that did rather poorly (at least, in
American markets) largely, I feel, due to its bizarre treatment in marketing
the movie to the public.

John
Carter was a mess of
marketing issues. The movie is sort of
disadvantaged because science-fiction movies don’t have the best track record
in cinematic history. Sure, Alien, The Terminator, etc., but John Carter’s story is based on a golden-age
science fiction novel series—which are often very cheesy, and would appeal to a
very niche audience these days. Like
B-movies.

[And that niche audience is obviously teenage
girls.]

This movie was expensive,
and they needed to make a lot of money to justify how much they spent. So when marketing the movie, you try to
appeal to the broadest audience out there, which is why, I assume, the
advertisements look like a Michael Bay flick…because he’s incredibly popular
right now for providing big, dumb action movies with lots of epic action scenes
but very little in the way of depth or substance or characterization. People love big dumb action movies—including
me. But marketing a movie as a big dumb
action movie when it’s not is a huge mistake.

For example, if people go into a movie
expecting gigantic visual spectacles and wall-to-wall action…well they’re not
going to get that from John Carter. Don’t get me wrong, there’s action. Lots of it.
It’s really cool, too. But there
aren’t a lot of scenes just for the sake of scenes. Most of the scenes in John Carter move the story forward and
develop the plot. In addition to plot,
however, the movie takes time to develop its characters, creating three-dimensional
people instead of cookie cutter “good-guy” and “bad-guy” stand-ins

Now, I’m not saying John Carter is a perfect movie. But it’s much better than it’s been getting
credit for.

Another issue that
people probably had with the movie, at least whether they’ll go see it or not,
is the “what is it?” issue. You often
know where you stand with a movie based on the title and the advertisements.

Advertisements have
actually been too good at explaining
“what is it?” lately, to the point that they basically summarize the entire
movie for you before you go see it. Letters to Juliet, Youth in Revolt, What to
Expect When You’re Expecting, and Cast
Away are just a few examples of movie trailers that suffer from that
particular affliction. Strangely enough,
John Carter has the opposite
problem.

Most of the John
Carter trailers were so vague you had no idea what was going on. Who is John Carter? Why can he do these awesome things? What are those weird aliens? What’s this movie about, anyway? All they showed were some big actioney looking
scenes with dramatic, swelling music with no indication to what the movie was
supposed to be about. The trailers left
me thoroughly unimpressed.

Not to mention, the name
itself is incredibly bland. John Carter. It’s the name of the main character. When I first saw a movie poster for it, I
thought it was a new Terminator movie.

What the hell kind of
name is “John Carter” for a movie? Let’s
try an experiment. It’s called guess
what this movie is about.

Chuck Noland

Jake Sully

Edward Lewis

Sam Baldwin

John Ferguson

I’m going to give you a
moment to guess what these movies are about.

Done? Do you have anything? Here.
Let me help. We’ll make it into a
matching game. I’ll provide summaries
and you just match the name to the plot.
No cheating by using Professor Google.

a. Chuck Noland

b. Jake Sully

c. Edward Lewis

d. Sam Baldwin

e. John Ferguson

______A man in a legal but hurtful business
needs an escort for some social events, and hires a beautiful prostitute he
meets... only to fall in love.

______A San Francisco detective suffering from
acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the
while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

______A recently-widowed man's son calls a
radio talk show in an attempt to find his father a partner.

______A FedEx executive must transform himself
physically and emotionally to survive a crash landing on a deserted island.

______A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the
moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and
protecting the world he feels is his home.

And the answers are:

Edward Lewis – the main character from Pretty Woman

John "Scottie" Ferguson – the main character
from Vertigo

Sam Baldwin – the main character
from Sleepless in Seattle

Chuck Noland – the
main character from Cast Away

Jake Sully -
the main character from Avatar, and probably
the only one you might have guessed.

People very rarely name
their movies and/or books after the main character…at least initially. For example, we just had a movie come out
about the famous Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey, Jr. There’s also a BBC reimagining of the show
that’s awesome simply called Sherlock. However, it’s not like when Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle wrote the story he thought, “Ha! Everyone will know this character!” Nope.
His first book about Sherlock is called A Study in Scarlett.
Intriguing, interesting, and tells you a little bit more about the story
than just naming it “Sherlock Holmes”, who would have been a no-one at the
time.

Bill Murray’s modern-ish
version of A Christmas Carol,
entitled Scrooged, wouldn’t have
worked if Scrooge hadn’t become such a large, famous name, and synonymous in
our culture for a stingy, skin-flint.

I understand that
they’re shooting for branding. I mean,
when we say “Harry Potter,” everyone knows what we’re talking about. But even Harry Potter didn’t market itself
solely as “Harry Potter.” It marketed
itself first as “Harry Potter and the Subtitle that Explains a Bit of What THIS
Movie Will Be About.”

It’s really bizarre and
frustrating to me that the original working title, John Carter of Mars wasn’t used.
At least then you have a little more of an inkling of what this movie
will be about. Most people that I talked
to when I said I went to see it…had no idea what to think of it. When I said I went to go see John Carter, their reaction was, “So…can
you tell me what that was about?”

Even more frustrating is
that the title of the book the movie was based on would have been an even
better name for a movie. The Princess of Mars. I mean…c’mon!
How awesome is that?? Or, if they
were still reaching for branding, why not John
Carter and the Princess of Mars.
Much like the Harry Potter movies, now you have a sense of what the
movie is about beyond the incredibly vague and boring name “John Carter.”

Let me show you what one
of the movie posters for John Carter
looked like placed next to the same poster that I’ve photoshopped with my
suggested title.

Now, I’m no graphic
designer, but I think the other title explains a lot more about what you’ll be
getting into.

This could have been a
very well received movie, possibly even a Star Wars for this generation. Instead…it flopped. Big time.
Instead of embracing this movie for what it is—a fun, slightly campy
space opera set on mars during political turmoil between the natives—Disney
tried to make this movie appeal as broadly as possible by taking out all of the
potentially alienating information, and because of that, nobody knew what to
think and this movie failed to find any audience at all. I hope it does well enough in theaters—and on
DVD—to warrant a sequel. If it doesn’t,
I feel this will become a cult classic and sink into the under-appreciated
sci-fi movies hall of fame with the Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy movie.

Did you see John Carter? What did you think of it? Do you think it deserves all of the negativity, or did you enjoy it? If you DID enjoy it, why do you think it failed?

Great write up and I love your drawings too! Totally agree with you. And on top of what you said, it baffles me why they didn't use the most obvious marketing speak like, "Based on the novels by the Creator of Tarzan" and "From the Academy Award Winning Director, Andrew Stanton". NONE of the ads had used those or anything remotely like them. That just blows my mind! It seems almost like they wanted to sink John Carter and use it as some kind of write off or something. But that would be ridiculous, right? Well. It's that or sheer stupidity from the "legendary" and long-experienced Disney.

Thank you, Thank you, someone who really gets what happened to John Carter. It was a great movie that could have been successful if Disney would have cared one iota that it succeed. Love the cartoons and the name game in the middle. Very effective way to make a point. Great write up.

Thank you for this post. You are spot-on about the marketing. This is one of my all-time favorite movies and it's a shame it wasn't as well-received as it deserved to be. I sure hope we get to see a seqsuel or two someday.

@Khanada I hear that Andrew Stanton started working on the sequel before the original released, so if it has a solid DVD/Bluray release, in addition to be being piggybacked with The Avengers in a lot of drive-in theaters, it actually could get a sequel. But I totally agree; I had no idea the director of John Carter was also the director of Wall-E--one of my favorite movies ever--until I did my own research.

@diegomom50 I'm glad you enjoyed the name game. I was sort of disturbingly proud of that. Thanks for visiting!

@Maegan Langer - I'm sort of used to having the movies I really enjoy do well. My wife and I have decided we must be hipsters, it's the only way to explain how our favorite movies do so poorly.

@Chris Farley - I think comparing John Carter to The Avengers is sort of like comparing apples to oranges. Honestly, I liked them both for the same reason--they were both a lot of fun, and both tried to be different. But I think another issue is that John Carter had a bit more of a learning curve to it than The Avengers. The latter had several years and 5 movies of build up. JC...quite a few more foreign names and things to learn. Still, it all comes back to the marketing. (Also, totally plan to snatch up the Blu-Ray when I get the chance. The wife and I both loved it.)

What I want to know is why Edgar Rice Burroughs name failed to appear on any of the advertising? Aside from all the other ridiculous omissions, you would think the creator of the source material would warrant a mention on the poster.

I think that might be because to most of the American-Movie-Going-Public Edgar Rice Burroughs is not really a household name. To the people who know about him and/or the John Carter novels, this information wouldn't be necessary, and to everyone else it would be worthless. However, if they'd said something like Khanada suggested--"From the creator of Tarzan"--it might have done a lot better. Tarzan IS a household name, and that might have drawn more attention.

Another thing that might have been a cool tie-in? Why not get the Science Channel and the History Channel in on promoting the movie? I mean, using the History Channel to tie in the Civil War era stuff, and the Science Channel to talk about the history of Mars or space travel or any number of other things could have garnered some interest as well, particularly among the geek crowd. It's done wonders for Firefly.

I have also been thinking that if they had used the original title "A Princess of Mars" and said "based on a novel by the creator of Tarzan" on the poster, then everyone would have known what the film was about.

This is an excellent film. It lacks the major plot holes that plague most of the Star Trek films. It has interesting, well-developed characters. And it shows respect for the original source material. I will definitely but the DVD when it comes out. I ordered the book of film art, but my order was canceled and then the book started showing up on web sites for $150 or more, so I doubt I'll get that.

If anywhere near as many people buy the video disks as are currently pirating the film, we may actually get a sequel.

This where you post your head dumpings. I don't mind disagreement if you're polite, well-thought-out, and civil. However, I decide what is and isn't acceptable. I reserve the right for my underground dwelling Comment Goblins to capture and devour any post they see fit.

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About Me

J. M. Dow's owner pressed the B button, preventing him from evolving into his final form. He's had a fascination with dark, weird things since he was a little kid sneaking into the living room to watch late-night reruns of Tales from the Crypt. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and weenie dog.